Re: A few questions

From:

Elie Roux

Subject:

Re: A few questions

Date:

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 10:19:15 +0100

User-agent:

Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 (X11/20051011)

Jan Nieuwenhuizen a écrit :

What is it exactly, that you want to make? Do you want to make a
language for describing gregorian chant, or do you also need to
actually produce notation from that language?
If you need to produce notation, I would focus on that. The language
that you need will follow and evolve automatically. Once you have a
useful convenient language, writing an XML converter should not take
much more than a couple of days.
Juergen (cc) knows the details about the state of LilyPond's gregorian
chant engine.

Hello,

Thank you for your answer, in fact my project is not well-defined yet,
I'm on hollidays and the project will start after, I'm only preparing it.

One of the aim will certaily be to make a standard for gregorian chant
representation, that will be under GPL, and that everyone will be able
to use, a bit like MusicXML is ; I think it is quite important that
something like that exists. But of course it's just a part of the
project, other parts will be how to write it simply (eventually with a
GUI like denemo) and how to print it.

I explored some pists for printing : MusiXTeX seems interesting but it
is not complete for gregorian chant. One part of the project could
consist in completing it. I also watched OpusTeX, but even if it seems
better-made, the licence is not clear, and I want to make something
totally under GPL.

But writing MusiXTeX or OpusTeX is totally horrible, with key words like
"\punctumreversumparvum", so another way to write it must be used.
Lilypond style of writing seems apreciated, that's why I'm interested in
defining some grammar for gregorian chant in the style of Lilypond, and
eventually integrate it into Lilypond for another way of printing. But a
first step could be a definition of an easy language, that could be
converted into xml, and from xml to MusiXTeX for example, even if it is
unwise :) . This language could of course evolve as the printing system
(of Lilypond) would evolve too, but evolution is not dangerous, as all
partitions could be converted in xml, that will not evolve.

I'm very interested in the evolution and the actual state of Lilypond's
gregorian chant engine, it would be nice if I could have informations,
and, if the project goes in this direction, I could collaborate. I think
producing notation is important, but I don't know how Lilypond produces
it, is it metafont ?